Abstract: 

Digital Gadgets and Mediated Activities for Modern Girls 

The presentation will share the highlights of the sabbatical project taken in the 2023 spring semester. The project analyzes discourses about new media (i.e., gadgets, digital content, and mediated activities) in the texts associated with the American Girl dolls. Specifically, the project focuses on three dolls in the Girls of the Year collection released in 2019-2021: Blaire Wilson, Joss Kendrick, and Kira Bailey. The use of electronics by children, tweens, and teens is an important issue for contemporary life, and the brand takes part in the global trends of converging material and media cultures by producing a variety of media texts and incorporating them in the story lines and promotional materials. Because the toys and stories by the American Girl brand promise to empower and inspire children and future generations, the research examines how the company presents digital media and reflects on the implications for the gendered subjects addressed and produced by the narratives. The study argues that the stories associated with the characters in the Girl of the Year line reinforce the ubiquity of digital devices as well as the ideologies embedded in such arrangements.

Biography: 

Dr. Natalia Rybas is the Director of Graduate Studies and Professor of Communication Studies at Indiana University East. She is a feminist researcher interested in mediated practices of everyday life, such as teaching, learning, playing, and working. Her research has been published in academic journals (M/C Culture, New Directions for Teaching and Learning, Qualitative Inquiry, and others), as well as edited collections (Beyond Princess Culture, Advances in Educational Technologies and Instructional Design, and others).